


the body electric

by firebreathing_bitchqueen



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, hello from the sin cave, smut (with a side of science!)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:20:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebreathing_bitchqueen/pseuds/firebreathing_bitchqueen
Summary: Unplanned companion/follow-up piece to "are you lightning?".We don't just think with our minds; we think with our bodies, too. Blame it on the insular cortex.
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	the body electric

**Author's Note:**

> Blame this on my insular cortex. Advance apologies to anyone with actual neurobiological training/knowledge reading this: I am but a humble social scientist who indulges in low-effort smutty fanfiction in her spare time. As such, I have a very limited understanding of actual cytoarchitecture/neurology/etc.

Thirty years ago, we barely knew what the insular cortex was beyond an existing region of the brain. Today, it’s still mostly a mystery, but scientists do seem to agree on one aspect of its functionality: it’s the cornerstone of the complicated relationship between subjective emotions and physiological responses in humans. It’s so important, doctors cast it in the starring role of the somatic marker hypothesis. It helps us translate sensory stimuli into social emotions. Seaweed brushes your ankle in the ocean, and your brain turns that into a feeling of disgust or fear. Your lover touches your arm, and your brain turns that into desire or pleasure. Similar sensations, similar physiological responses: quickened heartbeat, the catch of breath. Different emotional responses: one prompts alarm, the other delight.

In the end, we barely made it to my bedroom.

Blame it on the insular cortex.

A flurry of movement, and I’m lifted off the sofa, legs still hooked around Nate’s waist, and I give a little hiccup of a sound against his mouth, somewhere between a gasp and a laugh, as he lifts me. Sensory stimuli prompting surprise and then pleasure. Somatic circuitry lighting up all over the place. Insular cortex, activated.

I read once that the human insula is incredibly difficult to reach for neurosurgeons because of how thicketed it is by dense webs of arteries and blood vessels. In fact, this dense arterial coverage and the resultant well guarded secrets of its cytoarchitecture are part of why it wasn’t identified or studied for so long. It wasn’t until fMRIs became more widespread that any real mapping of the cortex happened, because the vessel-forested region was so well hidden.

Based on the responses my body is currently exhibiting to the attention of Nate’s hands and mouth, though, he’s having no trouble reaching my anterior insular cortex.

We pause every few steps, distracted by each other’s hands, mouths, heartbeats. A shaky breath, fingers tangled in soft hair, and I’m no longer sure whether the groans I’m hearing are his or my own. I am positive, though, that his hands brushing my hips, gripping my ass, are being turned into sheer, brain-static pleasure. I tighten my legs around his hips, pressing against him, wishing, somehow, wildly, that I could just fuse myself inside him, our bodies into occupying the same space. This time, I know the sound I hear is from his lips, the warmth of his breath drifting over mine. One arm is still firmly locked around my hips, but the other drifts, fingers slipping once more under the hem of my tee shirt, hand large and warm and solid against my sacrum. His thumb circles along my spine, and my skin erupts into goosebumps. My insides erupt into liquid heat. My brain is full-on, somatic-marker-made white noise. Insular cortex strikes again.

Somehow, we manage to stumble into the bedroom, though, and to the bed, where, despite the thermosensory tornado that I’m positive is happening in both our brains, Nate sets me down as gently as if I were made of glass rather than flesh and bone. And maybe I am more glass than bone, so red-orange-white-hot that my body may as well be molten sand blown into glass. Maybe I am liquid wildfire and that’s why he’s handling me so carefully. Maybe the thermosensory tornado isn’t just in my brain; maybe it’s in my whole body. I want it to burn me alive, light us both up, melt us both into something new.

And maybe I should be worried that I’m already so gone on him, so consumed by this feeling of wanting, so ready to fan these sparks until my body becomes a home for the flames. If anyone should know not to make a home out of another person, it’s me. If anyone should be wary of relenting to relentless craving, it should be me. Instead, like Joan of Arc, I am ready to tie myself to the pyre for the sake of blind faith, ablaze for love of the new religion I’ve found on his lips, my body the offering and altar both.

He pulls away, briefly, not far and too far all at once, and my hips feel the lack of his like missing limbs. My arms reach for him of their own accord, hands outstretched against the warmth of his chest, tugging him back to me.

Our eyes find each other in the dim like twin spotlights and hold, questions and answers echoed in the silence of each other’s faces, the mirrored roar of want louder than a lion. His mouth is soft, lips slightly parted with the ghost of a smile that is somehow still so electric I’m half-convinced I could power the whole of Wayhaven with the urgent buzz of my veins.

“Please,” I start.

“Yes,” he says, our bodies shifting towards one another again, and I’m glad he seems to understand because I’m not sure I have more words in me. I think any languages I used to know have been crowded out by the sight-sound-feel of him, of us together.

The quickened heartbeat. The catch of my breath. The sensation of his fingers once again skimming along my ribs, now unguarded by the shirt discarded somewhere between my couch and my bed. The strange, heady rush of power I feel when he _gasps_ at the brush of my hands on the warm plane of his stomach, both of us trying to navigate the obstacle course of remaining clothing. The idea that I could make a creature such as Nate, immaculate being that he is, gasp at the touch of my hands is unbelievable. Far more believable is the feeling he draws from me, the graze of his knuckles against me as he eases down the zipper of my jeans. I wonder briefly what the statistical likelihood of my body spontaneously combusting so far from an open flame might be, and then I stop thinking anything at all. I’m too busy feeling. His hands lifting my hips, sliding my jeans off. His mouth mapping its own descent down my body, following the rib-skimming path forged by his hands, pressing soft, warm kisses along the curve of my waist.

When he grazes the tip of his nose along my hipbone, I can’t help the giggle that escapes me, feeling the vibration of his response against my skin, in my bones.

His smile, when his eyes flick up to meet mine in the lowlight, is wicked. “Ticklish, _schatje_?”

“Apparently,” I breathe, then giggle again as he nuzzles the crease of my hip once more, just barely nudging the waistband of my underwear. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” His breath is warm on my skin, as he kisses his way across to my other hipbone. “I love your laugh. It’s perfect. And, I confess, it has me very interested to know what other perfect sounds I can draw out of you.”

The sound I make as his tongue flicks out to caress my hipbone is nowhere near a laugh. “Please find out immediately,” I breathe, and feel him smile briefly against my skin before continuing his descent, eyes still on mine dark and _warm_ and limpid. If he’s still smiling as he kisses his way down, I’m too distracted to notice, my brain busy processing sensory stimuli, all those sensations and

_(the gentle, gliding graze of teeth dragging down the last silken scrap of a barrier between us)_

sounds drowning out everything but the emotional response,

_(the gasp-laugh catch of breath at the skimming scrape of stubble on sensitive skin, stark contrast to the soft, lingering press of his lips at the apex of my thighs)_

the translation of sensation in context. Your brain telling you, _we are not startled, we are_ scintillating _._ Same thrill of electricity. Different interpretation. It’s one of the reasons they tell you to combat anxiety by telling yourself you’re excited rather than apprehensive. Your body feels the same sensations in both scenarios. It’s up to your brain to decide if that stroke against your skin should prompt fear or fervor.

The quickened heartbeat. The catch of breath. The tense crescendo of muscles contracting and then releasing all at once. Somatic circuitry buzzing, every neuronal pathway a live wire, physiological sensory input translated into a feeling of sheer, gasping pleasure.

Like I said: blame it on the insular cortex.


End file.
